Corrosion resistance and earth-abundance FeS-based heterojunction catalyst for seawater splitting at industrial grade density

Jinchen Fan; Xunwei Ma; Jiajing Xia; Lujia Zhang; Qingyuan Bi; Weiju Hao

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2023.12.001

Corrosion resistance and earth-abundance FeS-based heterojunction catalyst for seawater splitting at industrial grade density

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2024 Mar:657:393-401. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2023.12.001. Epub 2023 Dec 2.

Authors

Jinchen Fan¹, Xunwei Ma², Jiajing Xia¹, Lujia Zhang¹, Qingyuan Bi³, Weiju Hao⁴

Affiliations

¹ School of Materials and Chemistry, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai 200093, PR China.
² School of Resource and Environmental Engineering, Shanghai Polytechnic University, Shanghai 201209, PR China.
³ School of Materials and Chemistry, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai 200093, PR China. Electronic address: qybi@usst.edu.cn.
⁴ School of Materials and Chemistry, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai 200093, PR China. Electronic address: wjhao@usst.edu.cn.

PMID: 38056044
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2023.12.001

Abstract

The strategic progression toward highly efficient transition metal electrocatalytic electrodes is crucial to achieving efficiency and long-term stability in hydrogen production from authentic seawater sources. This work reports the development of a self-supporting, heterogeneous and corrosion-resistant iron sulfur-based catalytic electrode via a streamlined, one-step process involving sulfide etching and electroless plating on an iron foam substrate (IF). This new electrode, named NiS-FeS@IF, involves a nanostructured NiS-FeS catalytic material that combines in situ, resulting in a thin, ultrathin nanospherical layer on the IF. This construction has low overpotentials of merely 322 mV for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and 563 mV for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) with a current density of 500 mA cm^-2 in alkaline simulated seawater electrolytes. Importantly, the NiS-FeS@IF electrode enduring more than 500 h at an industrial grade high current density of 1 A cm^-2 without noteworthy performance deterioration. The unique and uniformly dispersed morphology of NiS-FeS facilitates intensified interfacial electron transfer, optimizes active site exposure and provides efficient channels for the rapid release and mass transfer of gas bubbles. This work introduces a novel approach for the facile preparation of efficient electrode materials.

Keywords: Catalytic electrolysis; FeS-heterojunction; Seawater splitting; Stability and corrosion resistance; Sulfur etching.